In October the Ministry of Justice announced it had finalized a list of community courts that it plans to close.

Each government department has been asked to squeeze out every last pound of cost savings that they can, except for a few like defence where spending has been ring-fenced. One place that HM Treasury has told each ministry to target for cuts are their property holdings.

Property costs a lot to own and maintain, and the thinking goes that if the government is able to sell these buildings off, it will turn a quick profit that will go to paying down the debt. There is also a massive push to close police stations.

With new technologies community courts can be consolidated. Prisoners no longer need to appear in person but can hear the charges against them via video link. I wrote a piece for the International Business Times about the concerns this has created for local justice in communities where courts may close.

Another way of looking at it, though, is to map out and visualize exactly what the closures would look like. So I compiled the data from publicly available records in a spreadsheet and popped it into Google Maps. The visual below is broken down by party and shows how much it costs to run each of the courts annually. See if you can find a court near you on there.